Talks

Galaxy mergers, which are a natural consequence of hierarchical assembly of galaxies, are expected to produce binary black holes, which subsequently merge. The detection and analysis of gravitational waves from these sources is the major aim of the next generation gravitational wave detector: LISA, the Laser Interferometric Space Antenna. These gravitational waves encode a tremendous amount of information, but to make the connection with astrophysics and cosmology, it is necessary to identify the galaxies hosting these mergers via the associated electromagnetic counterpart to these mergers. I will describe these mergers events and discuss the various regimes where potential electromagnetic counterparts can be found. I will also describe some recent work, which holds much promise for the prompt identification of these mergers -- an electromagnetic precursor from tidal forcing.

In causal set quantum gravity, spacetime is assumed to have a fundamental atomicity or discreteness, and is replaced by a locally finite poset, the causal set. After giving a brief review of causal sets, I will discuss two distinct approaches to constructing a quantum dynamics for causal sets. In the first approach one borrows heavily from the continuum to construct a partition function for causal sets. This is illustrated in a 2-d model of causal sets, in which typicality replaces quantum probabilities. The second approach is intrinsic, and uses the quantum measure formulation in which dynamics is described in the language of measure theory and observables are measurable sets in an event algebra. Using the example of complex percolation dynamics I will show that naive attempts to carry out this process for the quantum measure may not work. I will end by discussing possible ways to address this question.

Quantum Bayesianism is a point of view on quantum foundations that says that there is no such thing as a “measurement problem” because there is no such THING as a quantum state: Quantum states are not things---instead information. But the view doesn’t stop there; it starts there! Taking the idea seriously over the last 15 years has been the direct motivation for a number of theorems and objects in quantum information theory: from the no-broadcasting theorem, to the quantum de Finetti theorem, and even some quantum cryptographic alphabets. I will review some of this, and then move on to the holy grail of present efforts: Finding an efficient representation of quantum states in terms of a singular probability function. Doing so leads to the hard technical problem of demonstrating the existence of a certain very symmetric sets of quantum states, and holds out the hope of understanding the amount of “quantum stuff” in a physical system in terms of a single parameter. (I.e., there is the THING that the quantum state is not).

In the Scholium in Newton's Principia which contains the discussions about absolute space, time, and the bucket experiment, Newton also posed a problem that Julian Barbour has denoted the "Scholium problem". Newton writes there "But how are we to obtain the true motions from their causes, effects, and apparent differences, and the converse, shall be explained more at large in the following treatise. For to this end it was that I composed it". This problem was clearly considered very important by Newton who claims he wrote the Principia dedicated to this problem. Interestingly Newton never returned to the problem. In this talk we are going to give a mathematical precise formulation of the Scholium problem. A subpart of the Scholium problem consists of determining how accurate the observers clock is. We are going to start from that end and see that the problem of defining duration is inseparately intertwined with the full scholium problem.

We report on a new class of fast-roll inflationary models. In a part of its parameter space, inflationary perturbations exhibit quite unusual phenomena such as scalar and tensor modes freezing out at widely different times, as well as scalar modes reentering the horizon during inflation. One specific point in parameter space is characterized by extraordinary behavior of the scalar perturbations. Freeze-out of scalar perturbations as well as particle production at horizon crossing are absent. Also the behavior of the perturbations around this quasi-de Sitter background is dual to a quantum field theory in flat space-time. Finally, the form of the primordial power spectrum is determined by the interaction between different modes of scalar perturbations.